“Our marine hasn’t changed much, has he?” the pretty Mr. Barlow asked me, when we looked at the small heavyweight in the JV wrestling team photo. Emory Trowbridge’s hatred had been restrained even then, even as a teenager. No wonder no one could remember him. Emory Trowbridge hadn’t done anything; maybe, as a teenager, he’d also refrained from saying what he thought. The snowshoer and I knew that our marine had overcome his youthful reticence to express himself. We could only guess that being in the Marine Corps had given him more confidence; maybe the experience had shaped, or had hardened, his political views. He’d told us (bitterly, but without anger) the Marine Corps was his home. Yet in his sullen standoffishness, even in the JV wrestling team photo, our backup heavyweight didn’t look like a team player. To Elliot and me, our marine had behaved like a born loner.

“Tell me how a loner is likely to fare in the Marine Corps. We should ask the general about our marine,” the snowshoer had said. But we let it go, or we were too busy—or we didn’t want to bother Sam. The general, we knew, was busier than we were, and we weren’t imagining we would see our marine again.

Mr. Barlow was busier as a copy editor than she’d ever been; she was also the sole trustee of her late parents’ estate, not only their real estate but the little Barlows’ literary holdings. It was in the realm of the little English teacher’s expertise to choose a biographer for the departed writing team, but Elliot was over her head as a landlord. For now, she’d been advised, it was more profitable for her to rent the little Barlows’ ski chalet in St. Anton and their pied-à-terre in Vienna than it would be to sell them. On the other hand, the snowshoer said, she was told she should sell the apartment on East Sixty-fourth Street, but she didn’t. Notwithstanding her conviction that she would never be a real New Yorker, the pretty Mr. Barlow said she was too busy to think about moving somewhere else.

My mother and Molly wanted the snowshoer to move to Manchester, but Nora and Em (and Elliot herself) had made fun of me for moving to Manchester. “I guess you’re really serious about writing all the time, kiddo, because I don’t know what else you’re going to do in Vermont,” Nora said.